5 Ways How Big Data is Boosting the Efficiency of Healthcare Services

The importance of data is limitless in an industry where millions of valuable patient information keeps circulating from one end of the system to the other. Converting this data into insight that can be later used for delivering better healthcare services to end users was made possible by the introduction of Big Data technologies in the industry. Gradually, the wave of digitalization transformed the way hospitals and other healthcare systems managed and accessed medical records for offering better care facilities to patients.

Although the participation of healthcare companies in adopting new technologies like Big Data has been considerably less unlike the other industries, its impact on the industry has been noticeable within a short span of time. Leveraging Big Data, companies have witnessed improvement in their performance and have been successful in delivering affordable care services to the growing population.

Here are five ways indicating the positive impacts of Big Data in the healthcare sector.

1. Pointing Out High-Risk Patients

Predictive analytics in the field of medicine is all about using current data to make medical predictions that help hospitals avoid reimbursement and financial penalties and better serve the patients. Application of predictive analytics in the healthcare domain can contribute to improving chronic disease management, hospital administrative operations, supply chain efficiencies and overall patient care scenario.

Hospital readmissions are quite frequent in case of emergency patients which eventually lead to inefficiency in the delivery of care as well as an increase in cost incurred by the service provider. The situation can be brought in control if hospitals can identify high-risk patients prior and address them with personalized and patient-centric care.  The number of revisits to the emergency department can decrease with the use of predictive analytics that leverages real-time patient data to extract clinically relevant conclusions and help in making best decisions in the future.

2. Help Prevent Security Threats

As the healthcare sector deals with an ever-growing number of patient data including their personal and medical details, the industry is highly vulnerable to security breaches. For instance, during the ransomware attack, it was the healthcare industry that got affected the most as compared to other U.S. industries. Even though the strict HIPAA laws regulate the industry but still a little ignorance or technical inefficiency makes it easier for technically advanced and sound attackers make their way into the hospital database and steal valuable patient data.

Big Data is the solution to the security concerns of the medical industry. But often healthcare organizations ignore its true potentiality and end up compromising with vulnerabilities for which they have no solution. The preventive benefits of Big Data are underrated as many are not aware of its latest advancements and applications. Using Big Data analytics to study the fraud activities of the past and the recent times, healthcare businesses can prepare themselves to prevent future possibilities of being attacked by any security threat of similar kind.

3. Offering Better Customer Engagement Opportunities

The adoption of Big Data technology has not only helped healthcare industry in securely storing and managing patient data but has also assisted in turning data into insights using which healthcare organizations can understand what their customers want and address them accordingly. As a step towards delivering quality care, companies came up with the idea of wearable devices like health watches, mHealth apps, and web-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) gadgets using which patients become in-charge of their health without having to visit the doctor frequently.

People can now keep track of their heartbeat rate, sleeping hours, calorie lost, steps walked and so on, using devices that work as physician aide. All the data collected from these customer engagement tools are then stored in the cloud to make it readily available to physicians from anywhere in the world for reference in time of need and also be used in developing health programs and personalized care services for an individual.

4. Bringing an End to Medication Errors

Often we come across headlines where wrong medication has harmed the patients and in extreme cases may also have caused his/her untimely death. The reason behind such mishaps is primarily because healthcare industry has not entirely implemented technology in its operations and is still heavily relying on manual record-keeping practices and other administrative works.

If researched it won’t be difficult to find out that most of the hospital database has become a repository of incomplete or incorrect details due to lack of proper maintenance. Human errors are unavoidable, and the only way to prevent such errors is by leveraging Big Data which can help maintain an organized record of patient’s medication history for use in both present and future. Systematic collection, storage, and analysis of large volume of medical data sets can make medication an error-free process.

5. Lower Hospital Cost

Like other industries, application of predictive analytics in the healthcare market too can aid organizations in predicting the future advancements and trends and act upon that with well-prepared plan and strategy. Big Data offers a great opportunity for healthcare businesses to reduce their expenses and also the wait time of delivering excellent patient care.

Now, you must be thinking how is that possible? If you are one of them who is still not sure about whether to invest in Big Data or not then you must pay special attention to this:

For the time being assume that you are a hospital CEO and you need to meet a sudden rise in service demand. How would you do that if it happens on short notice? Does it sound difficult?

Yes, it may be only for those who have still not polished their knowledge of Big Data, and in such a situation you may end up struggling. But for a user of predictive analysis, dealing with such sudden changes is no longer a hassle. For example, by analyzing data, they can predict the rate of admission in their hospital over the next 15 days and can allocate sufficient staff to handle the workload based on the analytics days before.

Final Thoughts!

Rather than going through write-ups on how Big Data can trigger the efficiency of your healthcare business operations, it’s high time that you embrace the latest technological upsurge and be one of the many beneficiaries of this revolutionary trend.